


Slow Burn

by devilsduplicity



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-30
Updated: 2010-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-29 23:11:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/692620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilsduplicity/pseuds/devilsduplicity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angel STDs had never felt so good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slow Burn

_**Slow Burn**_  
 **Who:** Dean/Castiel  
 **What:** Angel STDs had never felt so good.  
 **When:** Pre-Apocalyptic. A week or so after Dean is snatched from Hell and meets Castiel.  
 **Words:** 5,660  
 **Warnings:** PG-13, language

“Son of a _bitch!_ ”

Panic rooms made of salt-soaked iron and built on foundations of paranoia and caution had a funny way of dissipating ricocheted sound.

The words echoed despite.

“What’re you yammerin’ on about in there, boy?”

The door to Bobby’s safe room had been left wide open while the boys moved in and out of the household. They had been there long enough for the novelty of a circular devil’s-trap-decorated prison to wear off. Ghosting – pardon the clichéd verb – through the building had never been less fun. Silence had settled deep in their throats for a long time now; Sam was upstairs perusing Bobby’s admirably extensive book collection while the old man himself fiddled around in the basement.

Dean had decided that Research and Preparation were pointless pastimes, and had taken to lounging against the cot in the panic room and bouncing a tennis ball off of the nearest wall, because that obviously fell under the category of Something Productive to Do. He would strike the wall up top, let the little off-yellow ball hit the ground in a slanted descent, and hold out his hand expectantly as it found its way back to him. Sometimes he would switch it up – sometimes he would hit the floor first.

It was when he caught the ball for the umpteenth time that a sharp, distinct pain flared up near the top of his left arm, and he jerked to the side in sudden agony. The violent words filtered past his lips before he knew what had hit him, and because of their volume, had drawn the attention of both his brother and their mutual friend.

Footsteps pounded through the door and beat against his skull. He couldn’t see; his eyes were closed.

“God _dammit_ ,” he growled, curling in on himself. His right hand lashed out and slammed forcefully against the origin of his pain, but that only made the sting bite harder and his shouted curses died down to a muted garble.

“Dean!” he heard, but the voice hardly registered as Sam’s. A hand was at his side instantly, pulling insistently on his body to try and get him to lay flat on his back. He complied, mainly because his teeth were clenched too tightly to shoot back some witty comment.

“Bobby, get the medical kit!”

His hearing felt as blurry as his vision, every noise filtered through a tunnel dipped in oil.

“Dean, what’s wrong? Tell me what’s wrong.”

 _Satan’s doing the cancan on my shoulder_ , he wanted to say, but the words spilled out like a jumbled mess.

His fingers clenched suddenly, making his entire body spasm with the impending pain. Sam gripped Dean’s wrist and pried his hand off of the shoulder he had been clinging to like a lifeline, then turned quickly back to his brother’s arm and pulled up his shirt sleeve a little more violently than intended.

Bobby stomped through the door.

“What d’you need?”

Sam blinked.

When he didn’t immediately answer, the older hunter stepped up beside his self-appointed charge and peered down at the anomaly that had caught the kid’s attention.

They both stared for a moment.

“What?” Dean grit out when all noise seemed to stop.

Sam cleared his throat.

“Are angels radioactive?”

“Not that I’ve heard of.”

“Then why is it—”

“Hell if I know.”

“ _What?_ ” came Dean’s gruff, pained voice once again. Both men were startled back into action.

“Ice pack?”

“Worth a try.”

Bobby handed it off to Sam, and Sam veritably slammed it against Dean’s shoulder.

When people said ‘It hurt like hell’, they obviously hadn’t experienced the pain of Hell itself and couldn’t even begin to grasp the intensity of anguish a lifetime in a perpetual torture house could bring. Nothing could compare. No one could imagine the agonies suffered. Dean knew; he’d been there, done that, got the crappy t-shirt and the demon-penis bobblehead.

And this? This bit into his skin, dug past his veins, weaved around his bones, trickled into his marrows, coiled between his organs and scratched and squeezed and bit and burned and _this_.

This hurt like _hell_.

“ _Son of a BITCH!_ ”

-  
-  
-  
-

He rubbed his hand reflexively over the sore spot near his shoulder.

“So you’re telling me, not only is ‘Heaven’s Bitch’ branded into my skin from where an angel high-fived me on the arm, but it _glows in the dark_ too?”

Bobby and Sam glanced at each other, then turned back and gave him a curt nod.

Dean pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned.

“If a wendigo comes after me with a BeDazzler, excuse me while I go play Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun.”

Sam took a step closer to his brother, a concerned twist to his features. Dean knew that look far too well, and almost dreaded the sympathy that would come as a result.

His younger brother opened his mouth to say something, but Dean cut him off before he could get a word out edgewise.

“Does anyone know why it’s decided to act up _now_ when it was perfectly fine a couple weeks ago?”

He resisted the urge to scratch at it. It wasn’t itchy, but felt more like a slow burn humming beneath the epidermis. Pressure only made it sting, and fluttering touches only made it throb. The ice pack had helped take away the immediate edge, but that was a direct result of his arm actually falling completely numb. The slight pinprick of touch he felt now was simply poking through the numbness in anticipation to flare out into an immediate nuisance once again.

“No idea,” Sam said with a sigh.

Bobby added: “We’ve scoured through everything I’ve got, and there’s nothing that says this angelic mark of yours should bite.”

Dean folded into a nearby chair, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.

“So what? I just wait it out and hope this thing doesn’t heat up again?”

The handprint ached in response.

“Actually.” Sam, who had been pacing around the room, stopped in his tracks and turned towards his brother. “We’ve got a plan.”

“Shoot.”

His hopes peaked.

“We think you should talk to the angel.”

Dean raised an eyebrow.

“What, Cas?”

Sam nodded.

“Nah, that won’t work.” He tilted his body back and hiked his ankle up to lay across his knee.

“How can you be so sure?” The youngest Winchester couldn’t keep the hint of agitation out of his voice.

“’Cause,” Dean began, then shrugged. “He’s a grade-A dick who comes and goes as he pleases and doesn’t know how to give a straight answer.”

“Sounds like a match made in Heaven,” Bobby said from his position behind the desk, and Dean shot him a withering look.

Bobby, however, had a black belt in Ass Kickery and could not be easily cowed by the petulance of a hunter so shamelessly younger than him.

“You should at least try,” Sam pressed, but his insistence only made his brother run a hand wearily across his face.

“Look,” Dean said. “Even if he would help me – and we don’t even know if he _can_ \-- there’s no telling when Houdini’s gonna pop up. It could be today, it could be tomorrow, or it could be a month from now. I just think we should look for a more serious solution, instead of relying on the chance that some guy who _might_ know what the hell’s going on could _possibly_ show up in the next—”

“Hello, Dean.”

All sets of eyes turned towards the stranger now standing in the room; a man who had infiltrated their awareness with a fitful flutter as silent as the grave itself.

“We need to talk.”

-  
-  
-  
-

Castiel waited for Dean to shut the door behind them before turning around to face him. He said nothing; he didn’t have to. His expression was stony, yet soft; withering, yet open and endearing. Castiel wasn’t the kind of person (angel-stalker-thing) to wear his heart on his sleeve.

He wore it in the glassy reflection of his blue-as-a-midnight-ocean eyes.

“I take it this isn’t a pleasure visit?”

The angel blinked.

“I take no pleasure in your suffering.”

“ _Really?_ ” Dean couldn’t help the biting edge to his words. “What with the calculated threats and mental trauma, you could’ve fooled me.”

Barely a week had passed, and already Dean could tell that this angel of his was completely ignorant of human customs. Wake up calls in the most ungodly hours of the night, a complete and utter lack of expression save for the confusion that always seemed to cross his face every time Dean spouted out some mortal terminology – if he were anyone else, the hunter might have called it endearing. The word ‘endearing’, however, as defined by the Winchester Guide to Not Breaking Your Heart and Losing Your Fucking Mind, was synonymous with ‘annoying’.

It was that _look_ that did Dean in; the one that screamed of redemption and whispered for a hope of not caring; the one that ached while still managing to look utterly blank.

“You first,” he sighed. “Then I’ve got some questions of my own.”

Castiel took a step closer – an ‘annoying’ habit of his – and Dean could only tilt his head back and regard the other with a curious air.

“You may find that our inquiries are of a similar nature, Dean.”

“Is that so? Well let’s hear it, sunshine. I don’t have all day. I’ve got time to waste and things to not do.”

If he was so inclined to tell the truth, Dean might have admitted that his curiosity had just peaked immensely.

Castiel blinked – again – and took a private moment to wonder at how positively insufferable this particular human was before pressing on.

“The handprint on your arm has been acting up,” he stated bluntly.

Considering the fact that he hadn’t even hinted at the subject, Dean was a little more surprised than he otherwise might have been. As if the mere mention of his recent misfortune was a bad omen in and of itself, the mark started to heat up in response.

It was Dean’s turn to step forward, just enough to make his slight height advantage made known.

“How do you know about that?”

“I felt it.”

“How?”

“We are connected, you and I.”

Dean took three silent seconds to strike the creepiness of that statement from his mind.

“Wait. Are you saying I have some kind of angel STD?”

Castiel’s brow furrowed in that subtle way of his.

“We have never exchanged body fluids during sexual intercourse.”

Dean stared.

“Way to make it sound like Sex Ed all over again, Cas.”

The angel obviously had a fairly advanced grasp on the language and a certain way with his words, but when it came to custom, he only grew all the more confused. Inflection wasn’t something he had studied, and though he could perceive emotion, he didn’t necessarily understand it. That was what made talking to this particular mortal so difficult. He seemed to speak in riddles half the time, because every other phrase out of his mouth was a reference to something Castiel had never heard of.

He decided the best course of action was to ignore the things he didn’t understand.

“Earlier,” Castiel started up again, tilting his head in that cockeyed manner of his. “The pain rose to a crescendo.” It should have been a question, but sounded more like a statement.

“Yeah,” Dean admitted, then lifted his hand reflexively to rub across the mark, stopping himself when he noticed the angel’s eyes following his every move. He curled his fingers and dropped his hand, letting the tips of his calluses scratch along the fabric of his jeans instead.

“Can you tell me why?”

“Yes.”

Huh. The angel was helpful after all.

Dean hooked his thumbs in his pockets and balanced lightly on the balls of his feet. He wasn’t exactly sure what was going on, but he did know that he certainly didn’t want to experience that kind of excruciating pain again. It was far too reminiscent of his little stint below the earth, and anything that reminded him of that…

He shook his head. He didn’t want to think about it.

A minute passed before hazel eyes met blue.

“… _Will_ you tell me why?”

“Yes.”

Both men blinked – Dean, long and slow; Castiel, out of forced necessity.

“ _Today?_ ” the hunter pressed, frustration marring his tone of voice. He couldn’t help it. He was desperate.

“No,” Castiel replied, then gave a pointed look over Dean’s shoulder at the door on the other side of the room.

Dean glanced back, peered inquisitively at the simple slab of wood that had seemed to offend his angel buddy, then turned back around to find Castiel gone.

He groaned, then stomped towards the door and wrenched it open only to find Bobby and Sam leaning against the other side.

-  
-  
-  
-

Two days later, Dean was wholly prepared to give up on life.

The day after Castiel’s visit, the ache in his arm had thumped and throbbed a little more violently in a dangerously slow and controlled manner. By late evening of that night, he had been writhing in bed and completely unable to sleep. The morning of day two had met him with the ugly fact that numbing the handprint with ice was now completely ineffective. When night fell, Dean crawled onto the couch in the living room (Sammy was sleeping on the cot in the panic room.) and realized he was incapable of uttering a single, shuddering breath without feeling like his world was crumbling down in a single, superheated point concentrated solely on his upper left arm.

He had just gotten to the point of fantasizing about traipsing into the kitchen and amputating his arm with a butter knife when an all-too familiar voice broke through the haze of pain that engulfed his senses.

“Hello, Dean.”

The pain was so intense, he didn’t even have the good grace to jump. Instead, he merely buried his head further into the cushions, hoping that either this was a very bad dream, or Cas was actually here to kill him. His back was turned towards the intruder and he laid on his right side to keep the pressure off of his left. He didn’t know how long he’d been there, but the pure, carnal pain that arced through every insignificant inch of his mortal body told him it had been too long.

When he didn’t answer, Castiel stepped forward. A shadow was cast across Dean’s body, but he didn’t need that bit of evidence to sense that the angel was standing formidably close.

“You’re in pain.”

Dean grit his teeth, unable to speak.

_Thank you, Captain Obvious._

“Allow me to alleviate it.”

_God, Cas. Don’t make this sound like a bad porno._

There was no rustle of movement or sound of footsteps, but somehow Castiel was suddenly closer – just… _there_ – and Dean felt unreasonably frustrated by his helplessness. If Cas had had ill intentions, Dean would have been unable to stop him.

A hand touched along his naked arm lightly, and Dean instantly sensed the hesitation. The empty air was quickly filled with words of explanation.

“What you are feeling is the grace of God burning away the evil in your body.”

Nimble fingers slid up his skin and curled around his sleeve.

“The mark of an angel is a holy emblem. It signifies a pure spirit; more so, it _demands_ it.”

He pushed the fabric up carefully over the burn he had left blistered and scarred into Dean’s skin. Castiel had heard of angels plucking men and women from the depths of Hell’s tortures, but this mortal had been his first. The stories he had been told were simply facts and instructions to prepare him for something he might one day have to do. His appointed charge had come as a surprise to him, but he had acted out Heaven’s orders with the swift finality of any loyal member of the Heavenly Host. He knew a link would be made between him and one of God’s children. What he hadn’t counted on was the distinct connection to tie itself around his own heart and tug at his emotions until his loyalties were questioned and his doubts were revealed.

Castiel loved all humans, but Dean Winchester was _his_.

He didn’t understand it, and still regarded his duties as the more significant matter at hand, but he had found that the only way to disregard these strange… _emotions_ … was to ignore the matter altruistically.

He was a soldier of the Lord – not a slave to the whims of some man.

Still, he was there now, and with everything pushed aside, the only thing that remained was Dean’s very real hurt.

“The only thing that can soothe the burn is the presence of the being that marked you.”

The handprint buzzed with a cacophony of pinprick pains. Castiel’s hand hovered over the mark, hesitated.

“The only thing that can relieve your agony is the touch…” He laid his palm flat against the surface of Dean’s skin, matching the imprint of his own hand line-for-line. “… of an angel.”

-  
-  
-  
-

Dean had been dreaming.

He had been _awake_ , but he had also been lost in the murky waters of unconsciousness, pulled down in the undertow of a foreign sea.

The touch jolted him back to reality.

If the angel’s mark was a mockery of the most vile circle of Hell, then the angel’s _touch_ was a choir of sensation that spoke of true and unrelenting _Heaven_.

Dean jolted upright, his body going rigged before melting back into the couch with a sigh. Castiel held on tight, his fingers digging lightly into the mortal’s skin. Dean didn’t mind – the pressure felt euphoric.

He closed his eyes in silent revelry.

He would have been satisfied for the pain to have simply stopped, but Castiel’s touch went above and beyond that. A soothing balm was pressed like a cloth against flesh that bit and broke. This wicked strain of torture had ceased, and had been replaced by something soft and gratifying.

Dean would have fallen asleep then and there – in the midst of a strange angel’s presence – but Castiel removed his hand the moment his body was no longer locked up in writhing pain.

His eyes blinked open dazedly only to peer up at a face barely six inches from his own. Castiel had leaned down to better determine Dean’s state of health, and didn’t think to pull away when his human charge awoke.

“What—” Dean wetted his lips. “What was that?”

Castiel’s gaze flit all about the other man’s features, tracing a line across the bridge of his nose and the little crows feet at the edges of his eyes. When their eyes met, the angel stared.

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I—”

When Dean blinked, Castiel was gone.

-  
-  
-  
-  
In retrospect, about a week later, Dean figured it was probably a good thing Castiel had left so abruptly. The more he thought about it – about the slow warmth, the absence of pain, the way a slick little knife wriggled its way under his skin to coddle and caress the blood beneath – the more he couldn’t help but relate the feeling to…

He laughed, thinking how utterly hilarious it was that he couldn’t even think of _that_ word when the situation involved the name ‘Castiel’.

What was he – a prude now? Who had he became – Sam?

The sensation was eerily reminiscent of sex.

The warm heat, the sense of closeness, of bated breath; that delicate rise of endorphins come to wash away the troubles of a long day. The want to reach out and curl deeply in the presence of another; to shed one’s skin in a metamorphosis of pleasure that ended in the littlest of deaths. Ecstasy.

Dean almost preferred the pain.

With each passing day, the pleasant relief dissipated until all that was left was a foreboding throb. By the end of another week, Dean was once again curled up in the fetal position, trying to will away the burn. He had switched positions with Sam, this time letting the flat pillow and rough springs of the panic room cot support his agonized body.

It was better than the pleasure.

The pleasure was sick. It tainted his dreams. He thought about it every night, couldn’t stop thinking about it; had woken up once like a teenager who had fallen asleep to the soft sounds of feminine moans, only there had been no sound. Sound had been infected with touch, and nimble little fingers turned to rough, gentle palms. He had not gone to sleep thinking of anything in particular, but when he awoke, there was only one thing on his mind.

“Dean.”

“Go away.”

There were two things that didn’t bode well with him out of this entire situation. One, he didn’t like men. Not in the way his mind tried to provide for him.

“You’re in pain.”

A hand reached out and rested lightly on his upper arm. Dean jerked his shoulder roughly away, dislodging the hold.

“Go _away_.”

And two, he would off himself before sliding into bed with anything less than human. That was Sammy’s fetish, not his.

There was no flutter and no footsteps, but the silence that greeted him sang a lonesome hymn.

-  
-  
-  
-

It took him three days to realize that no matter how many ice packs he pressed against his arm, and no matter how many lotions and medicines he smoothed against the mark, not a single half-assed remedy could alleviate the burn.

Bobby and Sam had grown concerned.

“Dean. We think you should talk to Castiel again.”

Dean hadn’t moved from his position on the cot for twelve hours. He hadn’t slept for two days.

“ _No_ ,” he barked out between gritted teeth.

“Why the hell _not?_ ”

Sam’s frustration was marked by his sudden, alarming approach. If he had laid a single hand on him, Dean would have had to unfurl himself from the bed and jump his bones like a spider monkey. Fortunately for the both of them, that wasn’t the case.

“He helped you last time! I’m sure he can do it again!”

“Don’t want it, Sammy.” Only, the words were so low, so choked down by suffering, they weren’t audible.

“If this is some masochistic conquest of yours, then fine! But you have to—”

“ _I don’t want his help!_ ”

The cry was as violent as it was jarring.

“Dean—”

“Get me some ice.”

“Dean, I—”

“ _Ice!_ ”

-  
-  
-  
-

When nearly two weeks had passed since Castiel had first imprinted Dean’s mind with images of dirty, nasty angel sex, the hunter was beginning to wonder if having a supernatural homosexual kink wasn’t better than reliving Hell all over again.

Intense, unbearable misery had a way with twisting one’s morals. Dean knew from personal experience.

But he would rather swallow glass than swallow his own pride, and so blocked out the world around him and kept his torment a private matter. His cries had diminished; his pain only increased.

What he hadn’t expected, however, was for the angel to visit him despite this respite of verbal protest.

“Dean,” he heard, the gravely tone jarring his spine.

“Go away.”

It might have been redundant, but hell, it worked last time.

“I need your help.”

“I’m a little busy at the moment, in case you haven’t noticed,” he practically snarled in response.

“Dean.”

Spoken a notch lower, and something twisted inside the hunter’s stomach. The knife in his marked arm did a one-eighty, then reversed positions and continued on. Nothing quite hurt like what he felt then and there. Slick silver dug into his skin, unseen, but the vilest of metaphors.

“Go away!”

“No.”

And a harsh grip clamped down on his wrist. Castiel was there, hovering above him, leaning in slowly, and the look in his eyes made Dean gulp.

“Cas—”

“ _No._ ”

The lowest of rumbles, little more than a throaty growl spoken intimately between two friends.

They stared – they did that a lot – they were accustomed to it by now.

Castiel broke the silence.

“I need to touch you.”

And Dean groaned.

“Again with the bad porno, Cas?”

But Castiel didn’t understand, so he moved closer and pressed onward.

“Everything you feel, I feel as well.”

Probably ten-fold, because inhuman bodies had a tendency to feel more acutely than those of a normal mortal strain, but he refrained from saying this aloud.

It took a moment for Dean to wrap his mind around the idea that the man standing stoically before him was suffering the same kind of torture that currently had his body clenched in the throes of agony.

“I need to touch you,” Castiel said again, and slipped two delicate fingers beneath the fabric of the other man’s sleeve. He made eye contact, paused, waited for permission to continue.

Dean didn’t remember agreeing, but he obviously had, because one moment he was staring into fathomless blue eyes, and the next that warm palm was pressed tightly over the angelic mark that had been paining him the past couple of weeks, and it was all he could do to not throw himself off of the cot in pure, unadulterated pleasure.

He couldn’t keep his eyes open, but when he fell back against the bed he felt the mattress beside his head dip from where Castiel steadied his other hand for balance.

“ _Cas_ ,” he choked out, and was going to say something along the lines of ‘too much’ or ‘hold off’, but lost his voice sometime after the first wave of euphoria crashed into the second.

Castiel wasn’t fairing much better. He was leaning down so far now that his forehead rested lightly on Dean’s shoulder. Though he didn’t make any noise of distress or give any outside indication of strain, he was panting heavily, hurriedly.

Something inside of him was breaking.

Something inside of him was breaking, and he didn’t particularly mind.

 _Enough_ , Castiel thought. _Enough_.

But he held on a moment too long, and one more after that, and when he did let go, despite the satisfaction, something hollow settled into the pit of his stomach where the pain had once resided.

Castiel pulled back. Dean’s eyes fluttered open.

 _If you’ve turned me gay,_ he thought, staring up at the ceiling, past the bright blue eyes that tried to pierce through him. _I swear to God—_

He didn’t get to finish that thought, because the insistent pressure of two calloused fingers against his forehead made him promptly pass out.

-  
-  
-  
-

When Dean came to, he wasn’t alone.

There was a heartbeat, and a heat at his back, and the breath of another, and something similar to comfort but a little more heady swelled up in his chest and made him choke on his own breath. Castiel’s hand hadn’t moved, but Castiel’s body had; two seconds before he opened his eyes, Dean could sense this.

“Did you slip an angelic roofie in my drink, or what?”

An arm was slung around his chest and another pillowed his head. Castiel’s fingers were still pressed firmly along the mark; cradled beneath fabric, subtle and sublime. The scent of soft duplicity fanned out along the scruff at the bottom of Dean’s head – Castiel smelt of old blood and blooming innocence; the musk of a used body mixed with the tang of perpetual holiness. His breath was minty, as if he’d just brushed his teeth, and he was so close that Dean could feel the hesitant butterfly kisses glancing along the back of his neck when the angel blinked.

“You haven’t had anything to drink since I’ve arrived.”

The voice rumbled beside his ear, trembled against his spine.

“It’s an expression, Cas.”

“For what?”

Time to move on.

“Look, I’m not a big fan of cuddling, so if we could just—”

Dean made a move to get off of the cot, but Castiel’s grip turned to iron and held him firmly in place.

“No,” he said sharply, and then added hastily, “Not yet. Wait.”

Dean pursed his lips and stared straight ahead, as if the wall in front of him had somehow offended him.

“I’m glad you’re starting to get this whole emotions things, Cas, I really am. But you’re gonna have to find someone else to experiment with, alright?”

Castiel didn’t seem affected by the rejection; he didn’t seem to really understand.

“The mark shouldn’t be acting up this way. What have you done?”

There were a few moments where Dean thought it wise to try and forcefully pry himself away from the arms of this angel, but after giving it a hell of a good attempt, he finally gave up with a resigned sigh.

“Nothing.”

Castiel doubted that.

“It wouldn’t flare up without just cause.”

Dean scowled.

“Unless bouncing a tennis ball on hard steel is considered a mortal sin in God’s book, I haven’t done a damned thing.”

There was hesitation behind him, then an exhale that danced across bared skin.

“Perhaps it is in your blood.”

“… Gee, _thanks_ Cas.”

Dean thought he felt the other man shrug, but it was too small of a movement to be entirely sure. Castiel fell silent, but still he didn’t release him, and the presence of this particular angel made Dean feel more uncomfortable by the minute.

“So now that we’ve had our little Dr. Phil moment here, d’you mind letting me go?”

“The longer I maintain contact, the less you will have need to see me.”

For some reason, that made Dean feel sick to his stomach.

“Yeah, well, at this rate I’ll never have to see you again.”

He turned his head when he heard footsteps stomping down the stairs, and the moment before Sam came bursting through the door, Castiel spread his ethereal wings and vanished.

And Dean thought, worriedly, that his words might actually come true.

-  
-  
-  
-

Which was a completely unfounded fear, really, because about a month later Castiel showed up while he was outside cleaning his car, and kissed him so hard Dean thought he might have originally meant to bite. By the time Castiel pulled away, Dean was leaning heavily against the hood of the Impala, because on one note, the angel had forcefully pushed him into that position, and on the other, he had lost the ability to stand.

Dean’s heart had started to beat fervently in his chest, and the sheer fact that the other man hadn’t – wouldn’t – couldn’t take a single step back only served to make the entire experience that much more overwhelming.

Dean hadn’t ever kissed a man before. The lips were of a different texture than most of the women he had wooed over the years, and he could feel the scruff of a five o’clock shadow scrape benignly against his cheek; could feel it even when the kiss had ended, and so lifted a hand to rub absently at the echo of a touch.

Blue eyes followed the motion, and all Dean could do was blink when he saw the angel trail the tip of his tongue across his lower lip, as if suddenly ravenous for another taste.

Castiel leaned forward, and Dean leaned back.

“ _Easy_ there, tiger,” he warned nervously, dropping the hand at his face and placing it firmly between them. His palm pressed warmly against the other man’s chest, held him at bay, but by the look in Castiel’s eyes, holding him off with a single gesture was about as effective as eating soup with a fork.

Good luck with that one.

The angel glanced down between them, eyed Dean’s hand for the length of about a second, then wrapped the fingers of his left hand firmly around the hunter’s wrist and looked back up.

“I’m not an animal.”

Dean felt the acute need to headdesk.

“I don’t mean that literally, Cas—”

“No,” he interrupted, then slid his fingers around Dean’s hand and tugged it upwards to curl gently along his own cheek. “I’m not an animal.”

And like any good story, everything made more sense in the retelling.

“Honestly,” Dean breathed on a laugh, frozen to his car with Castiel inches away from his face. “At this point, I’m more hung up on the fact that you’re a man.”

Castiel stared at him.

“I’m an angel. Gender is relative.”

“Not when you’re on the receiving end.”

He glanced down, stared at the other man’s lips, then subconsciously licked his own. They felt dry, wanting for something, and here was a man standing mere inches in front of him, perfectly willing to give.

“I can’t do this, Cas,” Dean whispered, but leaned in despite, and captured the other man’s lips with his own. This time he let the kiss slide into careful fruition, guiding gently, because Castiel seemed at a sudden loss for what to do. The hunter’s eyes drifted shut, feathery light, the eyelashes giving their own little kiss against his cheek, and it took a good moment or two for Castiel to follow suit.

An ache burned between them, a desperate cry of sanctified anguish boiling in a pot and spilling scalding holy water over both men. It felt so good it hurt – hurt so much it crippled the senses and made sense of pleasurable pain. There was no want in this, but there was need, and desire, and purity, and the touch of a rose petal dipped in sunshine arching brilliantly into the shadow of a golden morning only the moon could conjure forth.

Dean knew more than most, after all, how easily unbearable pain could twist one’s morals – and loving this angel’s touch was nothing short of agonizing.

-  
The  
End  
-


End file.
